Web of Trust extension comes to Chrome

Google's browser now has an extension to use the Web of Trust, a project that lets people rate the trustworthiness of Web sites and see how others have rated them.

The open-source plug-in previously worked only with Firefox and Internet Explorer, but now a version is available for the new developer preview version of Chrome, according to a blog post.

The Web of Trust extension lets people rate Web pages. Clicking an icon in the lower left corner of Chrome pops up this interface.
Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET

It's one of a host of relatively widely used extensions available on other browsers but now on their way to Chrome, whose extensions framework is just getting off the ground. There also are extensions (called add-ons in the Firefox realm) for Delicious and Xmarks, for example.

The extension takes advantage of the newer "mole" feature that lets windows pop up from the bottom of the screen. (The "mole" term originated with the work Google's Gmail team on instant-message windows; closing a number of them is like playing Whack-a-Mole.) However, Web of Trust programmers are considering using a newer extensions possibility called browser actions, which builds an extension interface into a button that appears along the top of the Chrome window.

"Browser Actions look promising though and we're looking forward to using them in future," said programmer Sami Tolvanen in a mailing list announcement. He also offered a list of suggestions for the Chrome extensions interface.